McCain doesn't like the bailout plan.
He has come to Washington to scuttle the consensus and start over.

Currently everyone resents his presence, but he is going to make himself a permanent fixture. Congresspeople will continue to be irritated for a while, but McCain will eventually get the support of the Republicans who don't like the bailout idea.

McCain will work with Republicans to develop a counterproposal. Democrats will have to wait for it because they can't approve a bailout without bipartisan cover.

Eventually bipartisan negotiations will start up again. The plan that comes out of these negotiations will look different than the consensus that was just scuttled. It may not bear much resemblance at all to the Treasury proposal.

Democrats will say that John McCain stepped in to take credit for something that was already happening. John McCain will point out that he was able to win concessions, and that the new plan looks different from the old plan.

Depending on how big those concessions were, and how different the new plan really is, and in which ways it is different, the public may decide that McCain's influence was helpful. If they do decide this, then McCain may get a boost, despite all the preening and the presumptuousness.

Substance will drive the political outcome. If McCain causes substantive changes that are really beneficial, he will go up in the polls. If he does not, he will be justly rebuked for causing needless trouble in a moment of crisis.

Jacob Weisberg says Obama needs to tie together his economic ideas with something catchy and memorable. He's right.

Clinton pulled this off in 1996. He said we need to "build a bridge to the 21st century." This reinforced many themes:

1) Invest in infrastructure (the "bridge" image)
2) Look to the future (the world is changing and we need to keep up)
3) Psst, oh, by the way, the other guy is old.


How about a related theme, something like "Build an economy for the 21st century?"

This can serve similar purposes:

1) We're "building" something, i.e. getting the country active again after some recent scares. (An echo of the New Deal.)
2) Drills the word "economy" into people's heads and owns it.
3) Oh, by the way, the other guy is old: If this election hinges on who better understands the challenges of the 21st century, Obama will have a big advantage: He's young, and doesn't look like your average politician. Obama has successfully ridden the current of history to the nomination. If he can be "on the side of history", as Bill Clinton acutely put it in his convention speech of a year ago, he will be well-positioned to win the election.